Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo

Department of Biological Sciences
Graduate School of Science
The University of Tokyo

Labs Sugiyama Lab

JP

Core Division / Biology Sugiyama Lab Plant Physiology

Laboratory Website

Professor Munetaka Sugiyama

Associate Professor Kyoko Ohashi-Ito

Assistant Professor Takaaki Yonekura

Subject of research

  1. 1. Studies on molecular mechanisms governing plant organogenesis and histogenesis
  2. 2. Studies on molecular mechanisms underlying new generation and fate conversion of plant stem cells
  3. 3. Studies on primordium-primordium and cell-cell interactions that create organ and tissue patterns in plants
  4. 4. Studies on regulatory mechanisms of cell proliferation underlying plant organ morphogenesis

How do plants build their bodies? – Exploring answers in plant tissue and organ formation

Plants acquired multicellularity, distinct from animals, and have evolved their own mechanisms to build body structures suited to a sessile lifestyle. Keys to understand plants' body building may lie in several features: flexibility of plant cell differentiation and proliferation, autonomous pattern generation, multilayered interactions, plant-unique programmed cell death, plant-specific regulatory networks of gene expression, and formation of tissues and organs characteristic of plants on these bases. For studying the molecular mechanisms of these events and phenomena, we have developed bioresources and both experimental and theoretical systems, such as temperature-sensitive mutants and many other peculiar mutants of Arabidopsis, cell and tissue cultures of Arabidopsis and Torenia, and mathematical models of pattern generation. Using these tools in combination with various methodologies, including analyses in molecular genetics, physiology, biochemistry, morphology, histology, and developmental biology, as well as CLSM imaging, transcriptomics, and computer simulation, we have been attempting to elucidate the fundamental mechanisms of plants' body building.
  • Orixate phyllotaxis reproduced by computer simulation

  • Vascular tissue organization in the root of Arabidopsis